Arts & Sciences

Gabbie Eyler won the People’s Choice Award in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Holiday Cookie Contest for her chocolate turtle cookies, a chocolate sugar cookie rolled in toasted pecans and drizzled with chocolate and caramel. It is the second straight year a senior has won a top prize in the annual contest. Eyler learned how to bake from her mother, Amy Eyler, associate professor of public health at the Brown School.

Brett Wick, professor of mathematics, and three other mathematicians from the U.S., France and Australia, received a Discovery Project award for their collaborative international project “Harmonic analysis: function spaces and partial differential equations.”

Jeffrey G. Catalano, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, has been appointed the next executive editor of Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, the official journal of Geochemical Society and the Meteoritical Society. His term will begin Jan. 1. 

Brian E. Blank, associate professor of mathematics and statistics in Arts & Sciences, died of heart failure Sunday, Dec. 9, 2018, at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He was 65.

Ten students are among representatives from nearly 200 countries gathered in Poland for COP24, the U.N. conference on climate change. This year’s meeting will focus on how to achieve climate goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

John E. McCarthy, chair and professor of mathematics and statistics at Washington University, was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. The society recognized McCarthy for his contributions to operator theory and functions of several complex variables.

A self-professed science geek, Anand Chukka arrived at Washington University eager to prepare for a career in medicine. As a December degree candidate, he has accomplished just that. He majored in biochemistry in Arts & Sciences; conducted medical research in labs in St. Louis, Boston and San Francisco; and serves as co-president of GlobeMed. But he also majored in American culture studies, a decision that reaffirmed his passion for medicine and positions him to be a better doctor.

Autophagy has a remarkable influence on a plant’s metabolism even under healthy growing conditions, according to new research led by Richard Vierstra in Arts & Sciences.

Washington University in St. Louis experts from all corners of academia long have been studying climate change in the context of their own fields. Here is a sampling of their perspectives on the National Climate Assessment released Nov. 23.

Even the youngest students are ready to learn about climate science, according to Michael Wysession, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and executive director of the Teaching Center at Washington University in St. Louis.